After my little trip to Portland, I came back very inspired, with lots of recipe ideas. I think I fell in love with the city, its beautiful trails and restaurant scene, not to mention the gorgeous neighborhoods with magnificent trees and greenery. Portland truly has great quality produce and what a wonderful city if you care for great organic and fresh food and the outdoors. It’s heaven. At least, I hope heaven will be like that.

After a delightful lunch at Tasty n Alder, downtown Portland, where I ordered a salade niçoise and smoked trout board, it gave me the idea to play around with the salad, its content and texture.

The traditional salade niçoise (from the city of Nice in France) has similar ingredients, except for the bitter greens which I added here. I grilled some radicchio and endive, and made my egg “à la coque” as we say (in the shell) instead of hard boiled egg. I did not add red peppers because I used a vinegar with infused red peppers. The potatoes are broiled in the oven and the salad is a mix of shredded endives and radicchio with anchovies and capers. This salad can be served lukewarm, or cold. I like it lukewarm when I am not in the mood for a salad.

You need top ingredients to truly appreciate this salad. Get the best tomatoes, green beans and olive oil.

There are different steps in this recipe, but well worth it. If you are in hurry, I would not recommend this, but if you have some time ahead and in the mood for a wholesome and delicious meal, try it out.

Ingredients for 2

• 100 g (or two handful) thin green beans
• 4 small red potatoes, cut in halves
• 3 small endives, cut lengthwise
• 1 head of radicchio, cut in small quarters
• 8 small farm tomatoes
• 1/2 red tuna steak
• 1 tsp red and black sesame seeds
• 4 anchovies, chopped
• 1 tsp capers, chopped
• 1 tbs olive oil

For the vinaigrette

•  1 tbs kalamata olives, chopped
• 3 tbs olive oil (raw and unrefined)
• 1 tbs red pepper vinegar (or any other mild vinegar)
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 tsp chives, chopped
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Cook green beans in a pot of salted boiling water.

Season potatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper and broil in the oven until golden brown on both sides.

Heat up a skillet and grill radicchio and endive on both sides. Keep warm.

In small pan, place eggs and count three minutes after the water started boiling. Remove from stove and cut the top of the egg.

Coat tuna with white and black sesame seeds. Heat up a grill pan or skillet and grill on both sides, making sure not to over cook it. The middle needs to remain a little pink (or up to your tastes). Adjust with salt and pepper. Cut in 5mm slices.

In a mixing container, combine shredded endive and radicchio and add anchovies, capers, olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss well.

In a large plate, place one egg in the center of the plate. Arrange some shredded salad around. Place nicely all other ingredients around the plate. Drizzle with vinaigrette.

For the vinaigrette

Combine all ingredients together.

When you eat out, salades niçoises are always more or less the same, with minor variations from one restaurant to another…and often a little on the boring side. So after a few thoughts on how to make things a little more exciting and with a different way to prepare them, I came up with a salad that has the ingredients of a salade niçoise (less the salmon), that was lovely. Most of the ingredients are here but in a different way to present and cook them, which modifies all the textures and make them very interesting and exciting. Here the green beans are cut and mixed with the greens and cherry tomatoes. The olives are turned into a tapenade which is an olive paste from the South of France spread on top of the bread. The egg is poached and not boiled and the other final touch is the salt, I used sea weed salt (from Brittany) but of course, you can use any other sea salt.

If you want to remain traditional and feel the salmon shall not be seen on a salade Niçoise, use tuna instead. This salad is really fun, and you can play with it using your imagination as you wish. For instance, if I had quail eggs, I would have poached two quail eggs and made two tartines, instead of one. Now there is not one particular recipe for salade niçoise, and each cook can make it the way he wants, even though the traditional recipe is not supposed to have any cooked ingredients, only raw. So if you want to say that my salad is not a Niçoise, like a Nicois (a person from Nice) would probably say. Well, I am ok with that…it is nonetheless delicious.

Sometimes for specific recipes, I like to remain as close as the original recipe as I can, but in some more “flexible” recipes, I also like to have fun in the kitchen and play around with food…but obviously it needs to be good or it shall not have its spot on the blog.

Ingredients for 2

• 1 salmon filet of about 1/2 lb
• 4 small round yukon potatoes
• 1.5 cups fine green beans
• about 20 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• 1 cup of mixed greens or arugula
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 1/2 bell red pepper, roasted,  peeled and cut in stripes
• 2 eggs
• 2 baguettes slices or country bread

For the vinaigrette

• 2 tbs extra virgin unfiltered olive oil
• 3 tbs lemon olive oil
• juice of 1 meyer lemon
• orange-champagne vinegar or any mild fruity vinegar
• about 8 leaves basil, chopped
• Sea weed salt
• pepper

For the tapenade

• 1/4 lb kalamata olives
• 2 good quality small anchovies
• about 6 capers
• 1/2 garlic clove
• 2 tbs olive oil

Preparation

Start by cooking the potatoes in water. When the potatoes are about 3/4 cooked but still a little firm in the center, remove from stove. Let them cool and then peel. Set aside. Cut the salmon in about one inch cube pieces.

Cook green beans in boiling water until cooked but still firm. When cooked remove from stove, then let them cool and cut in about 2 inches pieces.

Using a wooden skewer, place one piece of salmon, then one potato, until you have two pieces each on each skewer.

In the meantime, in a container mix cherry tomatoes, salad, green beans, bell peppers. Prepare vinaigrette by combining all ingredients together.

For the tapenade, mix all ingredients together in a mixer. Toast baguette and spread tapenade on top.

Broil skewer in the oven until golden brown and salmon cooked all the way through or pink (depending on your tastes).

Poach egg in boiling water for about 2 minutes (poaching technique will come in another post).

Pour vinaigrette on salad, toss well and keep some vinaigrette for the skewer.

Plate first salad/beans/tomatoes mixture, then place skewer on top, add the remaining vinaigrette on top of skewer. Serve with tartine of tapenade topped with poached egg, and drizzle with olive oil.

This is a recipe for those days you want to eat well and not spend a whole day in the kitchen. I can almost call this a fast food meal, and anything I classified in my “less than 30 minutes” category can be called “fast food”, now 30 minutes is fast to me, of course comparing to some frozen meal you throw in the microwave, might not be. Of course everything is subjective. But since we are comparing this to homemade meals, and nothing else, this is definitely fast food.

You can substitute tuna with any other white fish, and quinoa with rice, but quinoa being very nutritious, it’s always good to add it into a regular diet.

Lately, I have been using brussel sprouts mainly shredded mixed with other vegetables and I really like them this way. It’s one way among others to prepare them. If you serve them whole as a side dish, may people tend to be reluctant and un-excited to eat them. Shredding them, make their flavor more subtle and friendlier and less intimidating to certain people.

Ingredients for 4

For the tuna

• 4 tuna steaks
• 1 small green bell pepper
• 1 small red bell pepper
• 1/4 red onion, finely chopped
• 2 scallions, chopped
• 1tsp chives, chopped
• 3 tbs olive oil
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp tabasco sauce
• one pinch of cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper

For the quinoa

• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1/2 onion finely sliced
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 3/4 lb brussel sprouts, shredded
• about 12 cherry tomatoes, cut in half lenghtwise
• smoked paprika
• salt and pepper

Preparation

For the relish

Broil peppers under broiler on all sides until the skin darkens. Remove from oven, let them cool, then remove seeds and peel. Cut in small cubes. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well.

For the quinoa

Steam quinoa in a medium size pot with vegetable broth for about 20 minutes. Heat olive oil in a pan, brown onions. Add tomatoes and garlic and stir for a few minutes. Then add shredded brussel sprouts. Mix well to combine all ingredients, then add paprika, salt and pepper.  Cover with a lid and let it cook for about 10 minutes, until sprouts are tender but still green and with a tiny crunch. When quinoa is cooked, add to the pan. Mix well for a few minutes to combine all ingredients.

Grill tuna steak on a skillet, Add salt and pepper and serve with two tbs relish on top and quinoa on the side.

Sandwiches are not my favorite food, I very rarely eat sandwiches, almost never…but on Sundays I sometimes go to “Le Garage” in Sausalito for brunch (a little touristy town across the Golden Gate bridge), it’s a really cute French restaurant that serves good brunches, fresh, seasonal products and with a gorgeous view of the Bay, so all reasons combined to make it a great place for brunch.

Last time I had brunch there, I tried their Pan Bagnat, a typical sandwich from Nice, just because I had already tried everything on their menu and I was starving (that’s when I can appreciate a sandwich). I never order sandwiches in a restaurant, not because I am a snob or picky, just because I really don’t like to eat that much bread at once, it’s that simple. Besides, for me sandwich is something you eat “sur le pouce” (on the thumb) meaning on the go, you grab it and leave or they’re great for picnic but I don’t like to sit down in a restaurant to eat a sandwich.

Anyway to cut it short, one Sunday Pan Bagnat and myself met again after such a very long time that I had almost forgotten its existence and we fell in love over again.

Pan Bagnat, in dialect from Nice (Pain baigné = wet bread) is made with salad, tomatoes, cucumbers, sliced eggs, tuna, olives niçoises (also sometimes anchovies are used) and lots of olive oil (that’s where its name comes from, wet in olive oil). You can use green peppers, and basil as well. The bread used is a special round bread that is opened, with the white part of the bread removed (I have just learned that technically in proper English it’s called crumb – no S). The composition of Pan Bagnat is very similar to salade niçoise, and using local ingredients from Nice. The round bread is soaking in vinegar, olive oil to make it softer and then filled with those ingredients. Every bakery in Nice sells those but you can find it in other regions as well.

My Pan Bagnat has been a little modified from its original recipe, for the purists, please forgive my audacity to call it Pan Bagnat…Instead of canned tuna I used fresh ahi tuna grilled coated with coarse black pepper and some bell pepper paste as a spread.

Ingredients for 4 sandwiches

For the spread

• 1 cup  roasted red peppers
• 6 basil leaves
• 2 tbs walnuts
• 1/2 tsp crushed garlic
• ¼ cup olive oil
• salt and pepper

Sandwich Ingredients

• 4 slices ahi tuna (about 7.2 oz each slice)
• 1 cup arugula
• 2 heirloom tomatoes, sliced
• ½ English cucumber, finely sliced
• 2 eggs, boiled, sliced crosswise
• 4 radishes, slices
• 2 tbs Niçoise olives
• 4 tsp capers
• ½ red onion, sliced crosswise (to get rings)
• 4 tsp. coarsely grind or crushed black pepper
• 2 tsp dill, chopped
• wine vinegar and olive oil for drizzling
• Kosher salt

Instructions

Cut the roll in two, still leaving the bottom portion bigger than the top. Remove some of the white part of the bread  from bottom side.

First start preparing the spread. Place roasted pepper in a mixer, then add basil, garlic, basil, walnuts, olive oil and salt.  Mix to obtain a smooth paste. Adjust with salt if necessary. Set aside in an airtight container and place in the refrigerator.

Crush black pepper in a mortar or you can also use a pepper grinder that grinds coarsely. Place pepper in a flat surface or a plate. Add kosher salt to both sides of the tuna and press tuna firmly on top of pepper to coat both sides.

Grill tuna under broiler or on a grill on both sides for 3 minutes each sides or until the outside is cooked but still rosy in the middle. Do not overcook, leave the center of the tuna rare. When cooked remove from the oven or grill, and slice in small strips.

Using your hand squeeze firmly cucumber slices to remove excess water, add a little olive oil, dill and salt.
Spread 1 tbs of the roasted pepper pesto on each sides of bread. Place arugula, tomatoes, egg, tuna strips, cucumbers, onion, capers, radishes and olives. Drizzle with extra olive oil, a little wine vinegar. Press firmly and serve.

I don’t know about you, but I cannot get tired of eating fish and seafood. Ideally, I would like to become a complete vegetarian and stop contributing to the pollution of our planet by consuming animal based food, but I think I have not quite reached that level of dedication, maybe one day, hopefully soon. In the meantime, I will keep playing with fish and seafood and try to come up with wonderful ways to cook it.

Even if Ahi tuna tends to be more popular in restaurants, sometimes, I like the white flesh and lighter flavor of the albacore tuna. Ahi is fattier than albacore and is mainly used for sushis.

As you know, pesto can be made with all kinds of ingredients, this particular kind is parsley-lemon based, the lemon zest flavors the mixture wonderfully and you get this zesty-citrusy taste that goes perfectly well with the fish. You can use leftover pesto to serve with grilled chicken as well, or any white meat such as pork.

Ingredients for 2

For the tuna 

• 2 albacore tuna steaks
• 1 tbs coarse black pepper, grinded
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

For the parsley-lemon pesto

• 1 bunch flat parsley
• 2 garlic cloves
• zest of one lemon
• 3 tbs pine nuts
• olive oil 
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• salt and pepper

For the vegetable medley

• 1 fennel head, finely sliced
• 2 zucchini, sliced
• 1/2 can chick peas or 4 tbs of overnight soaked chick peas
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1/2 red onion, finely sliced
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• garlic powder
• 2 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation

For the pesto, mix all ingredients together in a mixer, and add enough oil to get a smooth consistency. You can keep it in a air-tight container for a couple of days.

Char broiled the red bell pepper in the oven, close to the broiler, and when the skin is dark and grilled, remove from the oven and let cool. Remove peel, and seeds, then cut in strips.

In a grill pan, grill all other vegetables, and place in a container, add chick peas, and red pepper strips. Add lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Grind black pepper and coat the tuna steaks in it. Add salt and balsamic vinegar, then broil under broiler for a few minutes until the tuna is cooked but do not overcook or it will get dry.

Serve with a tbs of pesto on top of tuna and vegetables on the side.

Wok is a great cooking utensil, and I am planning on playing with it more often. The thing is that I tend to forget I have one, what a shame. The electric one is perfect to make chinese fondue and a the traditional one to stir-fry anything. When you say wok most people think, Asian…well, it doesn’t have to be just Asian, anything can be prepared in a wok with more western ingredients, and I somehow like the combination of East-West flavors

I cannot dissociate fish and fennel, it’s like banana for chocolate. Fish can be substituted with chicken but I like it the way it is. 

Mahi Mahi is a white delicious fish and it is also called Dolphin fish but no worries, it has nothing to do with the dolphins. How can anyone eat dolphin? Its flesh is delicate and tender but cooks quickly so like any other white fish, do not over cook it or it will get dry.

Ingredients for 2

• 2 slices of mahi mahi
• 3 tomatoes, sliced
• 2 small fennel bulbs, shaved
• 2 small onions or 1 large one, sliced
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp granulated sugar
• 1 tbs basil, chopped
• 1 tbs mint, chopped

Preparation

Cut the mahi mahi in small pieces, about 1 inch thick. Mix garlic, vinegar, sugar and half of the oil and marinate it in the mixture for at least 2 hours. 

Remove seeds from the tomatoes and cut each slice in half.

Heat remaining oil in wok, and brown onions, fish, salt and pepper. Remove from the wok.

Add fennel and tomatoes and cook until the fennel gets a little tender. Be careful not too overcook the tomatoes, or they will get mushy.

Add the fish and onion mixture to the wok, mix well. Add basil and mint. Stir and serve hot.